So 28-year-old Indians starter Fausto Carmona is actually 31-year-old Roberto Hernandez Heredia. The news is barely a day old, but it already feels much older than that. Maybe it only feels much older than that to me. Anyway.
There's a lot of mystery involved in how this sort of thing takes place. How a player assumes another age and another identity. Courtesy of Mark Schwab - and courtesy of Pedro Gomez - we get a new nugget:
ESPN's Pedro Gomez reports Fake Fausto was paying hush money to the family of the real Fausto. They outed him when he wouldn't up the $ paid
Well isn't that a thing? Hush money! Legitimate scandal!
These fake names - at least most of the time, they're not really fake names. According to Gomez, there is a real Fausto Carmona. It's just that the Fausto Carmona we thought we knew wasn't the real Fausto Carmona. Again, it's reminiscent of what happened with Leo Nunez/Juan Carlos Oviedo:
Oviedo honored his late father's wish when he turned himself into authorities earlier this month, confessing that he had assumed the name and age of a boyhood friend in order to improve his marketability as a young baseball prospect.
Carmona and Nunez didn't make identities up. They assumed other identities, with permission. I'm not sure why ex-Carmona stopped paying his hush money, if that story is true, since he earns a high salary, but I suspect more details will continue to emerge.